Monday, February 1, 2016

Music Monday - Never Gonna Give Rick rolling Up

Today, a little bit of fun.  This post was inspired by one of my Facebook friends, who I will call "Mr. A".

What is a music mashup?  In its simplest form, it is a combining of two prerecorded music soundtracks.  But you can do so much more with them.


I was a little bit surprised (not sure why) to find, on my Facebook timeline thanks to Mr. A, this mashup between Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the Risk Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up".  My spouse, who is a big Nirvana fan and, not at all a Rick Astley song, absolutely loved this.

This song, as many know, was used years ago in an Internet prank called "rick rolling", where people would lure others into clicking on a link, which, instead of the promised news report or informational post, brought you to this....

..video.

The actual Astley song dates from 1987, way before Al Gore invented the Internet (joke), and it would seem that the practice of rick rolling started around 2007.  Why the original pranksters chose this song is a puzzle to me, but this started on an imageboard site called 4chan, and, several months later, started to spread through the Internet as a whole.

Once, the Macy's Thanksgiving parade got rick rolled. By Rick himself.  Now THAT's a performance to remember..

You would think Rick Astley has made a fortune off of rick rolling.  You would be wrong.

There is actually a serious use now of rick rolling in the war on terror.

This could lead into discussion of Internet memes in general, perhaps a post for another time.

So, dear readers...were you ever rick rolled?

8 comments:

  1. The songs were too nice to hear. My son would be always doing this mixing. But now only I'm getting its technical name as rick-rolling..... :)

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  2. I can't say that I have, but I enjoyed this post, for sure! I rarely hear about rick rolling any more, although I vaguely remember something from last year.

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  3. Enjoyed this. Thank you.

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  4. So, I was a fan of both- on different days. And, this mashup is pretty spectacular- except for the non-synchronized dancing. (Geez. Rick, didn't you know someone was going to do this for your video?)

    It reminded me of the Grey Album. (The JayZ Black and Beatles' White album mashed up by DangerMouse...)

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  5. I heard of rick rolling, but it's never happened to me. I rarely click on things, anyway.

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  6. My own beloved daughter rickrolled me! Oh, the betrayal! lol

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  7. I am wary of following links that come or seem to have dubious origins hence I've never been rick rolled. But I loved this post and thanks for teaching me a new word that will definitely impress my daughter and cement my reputation as a computer geek. ;)

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  8. I feel a bit sorry for anyone who has NOT been Rick-rolled. I wrote about this fear of clicking links (and why that's tragic) here: http://jahangiri.us/2013/the-death-of-hypertext/ (Go on, click it, it's safe - and will NOT take you to a Rick Astley video!)

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